Planters

When the Chester County Art Association sent out a call for artists to participate in a community arts project to mark its 75th anniversary, Rhoda Kahler was eager to sign up. She knew exactly what the subject of her piece of art would be. "People," said Kahler, a tile artist and teacher at the art association who particularly liked the public aspect of the project. Called Growing the Arts, the project involved creating 75 planters, each custom painted by local artists and school groups.

Falling tomato plants have injured 155 Americans so far this year as China-built stands for growing the fruit in hanging bags have collapsed on gardeners and bystanders, federal officials said. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced yesterday a recall of 82,000 Topsy-Turvy Deluxe Tomato Planters and Stands. The devices were imported by Allstar Marketing Group L.L.C., of Hawthorne, N.Y., and sold by Liberty Media Holding Corp.'s QVC Inc. division, of West Chester, through its TV and Internet programs and stores, for $30 each in March and April.

In front of the Academy of Natural Sciences, garden design contractor Liz Pailey takes old geraniums from planters and replaces them with new chrysanthemums. The flowers are changed twice a year.

Jenkintown Borough Council members received copies of the 1988 township budget but declined to discuss it Monday night because borough manager William J. Richardson was not present to give an overview of the proposals. According to council President Judith O'Neill, the budget does not have a summary cover letter listing anticipated expenditures and revenues or millage information, and the council members did not have time to review it before the meeting. Council Vice President Thomas Oliver 3d said Richardson told him that he expected expenditures to increase by $145,000 next year, but that the borough had a cash surplus of $158,321 for 1988.

A friend who walks to work through Center City discovered recently that he had unconsciously changed his route. Where he used to walk down Walnut Street past Rittenhouse Square, cut up to Sansom and then do a block or two of Chestnut, he now often heads straight up to Market Street and does most of his walking on that supposedly soulless boulevard of bank branches and office towers. The reason? The construction and remodeling on Market Street west of City Hall is almost completed, and the improvements are being felt at ground level.

Only one blot seems to sully the general improvement in cleanliness of Center City resulting from the successful efforts of the Center City District's street and sidewalk cleaners. The area right around the Municipal Services building, notably the sunken plaza along the Broad Street side (the one with the dead tree display in one of its planters) is still often aswirl with slightly used Kleenex, cups, cans and other crud. The reason, we're told, is that this is one area that's still the sole responsibility of city workers.

The beauty in nature is the last thing that crosses the mind of a person stuck in highway traffic. However, if the Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania has its way, all Pennsylvania highway motorists will be able to occasionally glance at, if not stop and smell, the flowers. The Garden Club Federation, in cooperation with PennDOT, has undertaken a statewide wildflower-planting program. The planters began by seeding last November at several sites in the five-county Philadelphia area.

Coatesville's sidewalks are in for a face lift. The city recently asked contractors to bid for its Streetscapes project, which will revamp the sidewalks. Gone will be the cracked, gray sidewalks and rough-hewn, uneven curb line, said project manager Diane Bernardo. In its place will be interlocking bricks and a smooth, level curb. "We're trying to create a ribbon effect," said Bernardo, pointing down Lincoln Highway, adding that the smooth look will tell visitors, "C'mon into our city.

Throughout the island of Negros, people are praying for peace but preparing for war. The government is trying to persuade the sugar cane planters who own the land to share it with two million landless peasants. It will be a crucial test of President Corazon C. Aquino's ability to reshape the Philippines. The planters are struggling to preserve the source of their power. The politicians in this provincial capital, the parish priests in the villages and the peasants in the cane fields say that if change does not come soon, combat will.

Long before the T-shirt vendors set up shop on the sidewalks and the homeless moved into a nearby subway station, even before John Wanamaker built his great retail store across the way, St. John the Evangelist Church stood in stone splendor on 13th Street. Since 1830, St. John's has been among the principal churches of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It was once the parish of the city's Catholic elite and later a spiritual home for thousands of Catholics who work in Center City.

A TODDLER in a blue baseball cap sat Wednesday in a stroller eating ice cream in West Philadelphia. His mother sat next to him in an orange bistro chair. Only six months ago, right where the pair were relaxing in the late-summer sun, cars and buses whizzed through what was a traffic triangle at 42nd Street and Woodland Avenue. Now the triangle is blocked off by large wooden planters filled with flowers and trees, and a small, dangerous "redundant" street has been removed to create a new minipark.

What a way to start National Peanut Butter Month. Following one of the worst peanut harvests in decades, peanut butter prices are shooting up. CNNMoney reports that Kraft is raising prices for its Planters brand peanut butter by 40 percent while ConAgra has already increased the price for its Peter Pan by 20 percent. ( http://cnnmon.ie/rvtoiT ) J.M. Smucker, the maker of Jif, will hike prices by about 30 percent, CNNMoney says. No word yet from Unilever on pricing for its Skippy brand.

Near the end of her recent lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Andrea Wulf touched on the role slavery played in the agrarian and horticultural lives of our nation's early presidents. Too bad it came at the end of her talk. It's one of the most fascinating parts of her new book Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation (Alfred A. Knopf, $30). For while she deftly conveys the idea that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were passionate to the point of obsession about their fields, crops, seeds, and - as they say in the trade nowadays - "ornamentals and edibles," Wulf also lays out the details of a disquieting and not altogether unfamiliar truth: that, for three of those presidents, a belief in liberty and equality coexisted with slave ownership.

Are you a scavenger? If you are, maybe you'll be lucky enough to find a Radio Flyer stuffed into a city trash bin, as we did. It was old and rusty and could barely move. We grabbed it. If not, you may want to hold on to some of your other junk for use along your garden paths, patios and porches. With the help of a garden center, the red wagon was transformed into a lavish garden centerpiece, filled with annuals, perennials, and herbs. You can personalize your garden with old junky items scavenged from basements, garage sales, and flea markets.

Today, April 23, generally is acknowledged as William Shakespeare's birthday, though many zealous bardolators and academic types quibble over this and virtually every other detail of the enigmatic Bard's life and works. Whether or not this is the date, it is poetically apropos to believe the great Bard's birthday would fall amid the first stirrings of spring, when nature awakens from her wintry slumber, flora comes to life in a profusion of colors and scents and fauna frolic about the garden.

It sounds a bit like a pet rock for gardeners, but consumers seem to love the upside-down Topsy Turvy tomato planter, which has been sprouting all over the marketplace. Bill Felknor, a folksy inventor from Knoxville, Tenn., has sold millions of his curious creations since they first appeared on QVC in 2003 - more than seven million last year alone, making it one of the most popular gardening products ever introduced. "I give the good Lord 100 percent of the credit," Felknor said of his "hanging gardens," which grow tomatoes out the bottom of a soil-filled bag and are watered from the top. Skeptics (there are many)

Falling tomato plants have injured 155 Americans so far this year as China-built stands for growing the fruit in hanging bags have collapsed on gardeners and bystanders, federal officials said. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced yesterday a recall of 82,000 Topsy-Turvy Deluxe Tomato Planters and Stands. The devices were imported by Allstar Marketing Group L.L.C., of Hawthorne, N.Y., and sold by Liberty Media Holding Corp.'s QVC Inc. division, of West Chester, through its TV and Internet programs and stores, for $30 each in March and April.

Once again, the Copper Age is upon us. The metal is warming up more and more homes, outshining the ubiquitous stainless steel and brushed nickel. It's everywhere - and we're not just talking bright copper kettles. "Copper has always been a traditional accent in kitchens as copper pots and pans, and as pitchers or pieces of copper gracing the tops of cabinetry," says Geri Higgins, owner of Portfolio Kitchen and Home in Kansas City. "Now, it's reinvented itself. " As a kitchen mainstay, copper has cropped up in countertops, range hoods, cookware and cutlery.

Every year, when the weather gets cold, Jan Goren's garden turns into a minimalist canvas of simple shapes and pale colors. And every year, in a melancholy ritual that seems to reflect the landscape, she empties the remnants of "big color" flowers from her concrete planter and sticks in a bunch of evergreen boughs. "It looks fine, but it's not great," says Goren, who gardens on a little less than an acre in Wynnewood. This year, she decided to brighten the somber December scene.

Every good cause should have a Libby Goldstein. She's tough - real tough - and shrewd about politics, which is probably the main reason the Southwark/Queen Village Community Garden came into existence. Also probably part of the reason it has survived for three decades. "It never occurred to me that it wouldn't work," Goldstein says. The gardeners recently celebrated this milestone in typical Queen Village style - with barbecued roast pig for the carnivores and vegetarian dishes for the eclectic rest, served in the middle of the garden at Third and Christian Streets.